Half Cocked
by Thrills n' Frills
Summary: Norah's quirky. Boone's broody. Caesar's an unlikely matchmaker. Just another day in the Mojave. F!Courier/Boone
1. Chapter 1

_Obligatory Author's Note:__ First of all, I blame all this on you. __**You know who you are.**_

_Second, I've been out of commission for a long, long time. I'm rusty and have absolutely no plot planned for this thing as of right now. Inspiration struck and I went with it, so bare with me for the time being~_

_Aaaand thirdly, the title is subject to change...whenever I think of a better one.  
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_Obligatory disclaimer stuff:__ I have no affiliation with any of the Fallout games. I'm just a bored 20-year-old girl with nothing better to do than use fictional characters for my own amusement. Dance, puppets, DANCE!_

…_so without further ado…_

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><p>When you travel alone with a person, odds are you're going to grow close. You get to know each other, divulge all your dirty little secrets, eventually drag the allegorical skeletons out of the closet. One way or another, you're going to end up caring about each other. It's almost inevitable.<p>

So if this happens with somebody you find even a little bit attractive, there's going to be tension thrown into the mix, and lots of it. It just so happened that Norah thought Boone was downright bangable.

There was plenty of tension between Norah and Boone, and it had been hanging over them like a storm cloud for weeks. Deep down they both knew that, eventually, it was going to have to rain.

_Cottonwood Cove had been a massacre. Dead legionnaires were scattered everywhere, some riddled with bullets, some in pieces. There was blood everywhere and the dry ground soaked it up, leaving nothing but dark red stains and an unsettling silence as the barking, screaming and gunfire all came to an almost simultaneous stop. _

_They freed the slaves and boarded the raft to The Fort._

Boone was not a stable man. It wasn't something she'd ever tried to kid herself about. Getting a glimpse of his eyes without those sunglasses hiding them made her feel like she was peeking through the windows of an old house that had only had its exterior refurbished. It looked fine on the outside. Normal, sturdy, nothing out of place, but one glance at the interior told a different story entirely; it was dark, gloomy, crumbling, barely able to support its own foundation, slowly but surely falling apart.

_The Fort…had been tricky. She wasn't entirely sure they'd both make it out alive as the legionnaires kept coming and coming, seemingly without end. Every passing second brought on a new wound and they were growing exhausted as they pushed forward, toward Caesar's tent. _

_And then…it was over. That unsettling silence overtook them once again as they stood over the body of the man himself. The leader of the most ruthless faction in the Mojave .The man largely responsible for so much suffering, so much death, taken down along with dozens upon dozens of his finest men by a no-name courier and a sniper with a death wish. _

_And they were __**alive**__._

_Exhausted, yes. Bleeding, definitely. They were bruised and cut and battered six ways from Sunday and Norah would have a limp for the next couple days, but they were __**alive**__. She'd never felt quite this exhilarated. She could do anything; have anything if she wanted it enough. _

_And Boone was looking pretty fucking good about now. _

It wasn't hard to see how much he still loved her. There was something about his voice when he talked about her, a certain look in his eyes, maybe even a sad little smile now and then. Carla Boone had been a lucky woman to have a guy so devoted to her, and if she was being honest…Norah was just a little bit jealous of her.

Jealous of a dead woman. It was almost funny, in a pathetic, insensitive sort of way.

_Fueled by adrenaline and feeling amazing and powerful and downright fucking invincible, she acted on impulse, standing on her toes, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him right on the lips. By the time she came to her senses he'd grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close and he was kissing back. _

_If it feels good, do it. It was a motto she tried to live by. _

_She didn't pull away._

_The trip back to Cottonwood Cove consisted of one big awkward silence._

_Norah insisted on looting what they could of the camp before heading back to The Strip. By the time they made it to their last stop, Aurelius of Phoenix's office, she could still feel his lips on hers. She'd caught her breath over an hour ago but her heart was still pounding. And Boone was telling her that they needed to get back. _

_She saw her window of opportunity, so she did what any self respecting Vegas girl would do. She rolled the dice._

"_Or we could…stay…for a while." She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted uncomfortably. Boone turned away from the door. _

"_What?"_

"_We could stay. For a bit longer. You and me?"_

_He squinted at her behind his sunglasses, looking tired. "Look, I don't know what you're on-" _

"_I'm not on anything!" She huffed out a frustrated breath of air and tried again. _

"_We," she gestured to the two of them, "could stay for a while." She made sure to emphasize her words and pointed to Aurelius of Phoenix's bed. Boone furrowed his brow. _

"_I don't-"_

"_Damn it, Boone!" _

_She pulled her shirt over her head with perhaps a little more force than was absolutely necessary, threw it on the ground and was in the process of unzipping her shorts when logic caught up to her, making her stop, widen her eyes and wonder if she could sink into the floorboards and disappear forever if she tried hard enough. _

_She risked a glance toward Boone. He was almost gaping. Almost. _

"_Uh…" her mind raced, trying to think of something to say to diffuse the situation so he wouldn't get mad, tell her to fuck off, leave her there and never want to see her again, when she found herself thrown over his shoulder. _

_He started moving toward the bed._

He was devoted, yes, but he was also a warm-blooded male. Every once in a while she'd catch him throwing covert little glances her way, and Norah would admit that she didn't wear skimpy outfits _just_ because of the perpetually hot weather in the Mojave.

Gradually, the innocent looks and not quite innocent but still harmless flaunting turned into walking a bit closer together, "accidentally" brushing against each other whenever they found themselves in close proximity to one another, letting their hands linger a bit longer than usual when she helped him tend to his wounds from whatever scuffle they'd been in, or when he tried to teach her the finer points of cleaning a gun. It had been building up. Granted, it had been building up very slowly and would have probably continued to build up for several months yet, at the very least, but progress was being made regardless.

_It had been hasty and unceremonious and fucking _fantastic_, and after they'd finished she couldn't help but grin. They made a pretty ridiculous picture, covered in scratches and cuts and bruises, lying naked and disheveled in a dead legionnaire's bed, Boone still wearing the fucking beret. _

_He grabbed his discarded pants from the foot of the bed and started rifling around in the pockets for his cigarettes, then lit up. Norah's eyes followed the smoke as it rose steadily towards the ceiling, thinning out and expanding and eventually blending into the air as she tried to decide whether this whole situation would be less uncomfortable later if she tried to discuss it or just avoided speaking of it entirely._

_Surprisingly, it was Boone who broke the silence. He kept his head tilted back and his eyes trained on the ceiling as he spoke, more smoke escaping with his words, and she almost missed what he said entirely, oddly mesmerized by the way it spiraled and danced as it defied gravity._

"_Can't say this is how I expected today to turn out."_

_She knew exactly what he was implying. The Fort had been a huge undertaking and, even though it had remained largely unspoken, Boone had very few expectations of making it out alive. She imagined him lying dead among a sea of legionnaires and pushed that thought, along with the crushing feeling in her chest that came with it, out of her head with as much force as she could muster._

"_Disappointed?" _

_She almost instantly regretted asking. She didn't think her ego could take a 'yes' right now._

"_That's not what I meant."_

_She waited for him to elaborate. Instead, he stubbed the cigarette out on the nightstand and stood up to dress. _

The walk back from Cottonwood Cove was uncomfortably quiet and initiating any sort of conversation with Boone for the next couple days was a bit like pulling teeth, but before too long Norah bit the bullet and went for another kiss, and another shortly after that. As she gained more and more confidence, the displays of affection got more and more frequent. They gained momentum and within a couple weeks even sex was starting to be almost commonplace with them. She even got the beret off him. Eventually.

It wasn't perfect-Boone still had the conversational capacity of a brahmin, not to mention enough emotional baggage to keep a good shrink busy for decades—but they were improving, bit by bit.

Norah could be patient, if she really wanted to be.


	2. Chapter 2

_Fun fact: When I started writing this fic it was supposed to be pure fluff. Boone made my fluff-muse stand against a wall and proceeded to shoot it execution-style. Then I wrote this. Let us hold a moment of silence for Fluff-Muse. We hardly knew thee. _

_Anywho, not so sure about this one, but here you go~  
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><p><em>He didn't know why he'd let Manny drag him off to the Strip. Sitting alone at the base with a bottle of something alcoholic had sounded pretty good to him. He sure has hell hadn't planned on finding himself wandering around by himself when he agreed to go. <em>

_Manny had decided to go to Gomorrah, and when Boone staunchly refused to join him he'd been content to go alone, determined to get his rocks off while he could. So while Manny was off risking venereal diseases with Vegas' finest, Boone was walking, scowling, and trying to find his hotel. The Strip was too damned loud for him and his beret made him stick out like a sore thumb. He didn't like being stared at. _

_A hand on his arm made him look down, and there she was, gorgeous and perfect and glowing in the neon lights, smiling up at him like he was an old friend. _

"_Hey there, soldier. You look lost." _

_And just like that, he was in love._

Carla had hated Novac. He wasn't stupid and he sure as hell wasn't blind. Every day she seemed to grow more and more unhappy, sitting at home by herself, eating less, talking less, sleeping more.

It was his job to keep his wife happy and she _wasn't_ happy. Not by a long shot.

After half a year of watching Carla gradually wither, Boone caved. He got home from his shift one night, woke her up and told her they'd head back to New Vegas next week. The way she'd all-out beamed at him, throwing her arms around him and thanking him over and over again made it all worth it to him.

They day before they were set to leave, their bags were packed and sitting by the door, ready to go, they'd bought enough food and water to last them the trip, and Carla was miles away, being auctioned off to the highest bidding legionnaire.

He went straight home after he killed Carla, took his shift like nothing happened. Went back to his room when the shift was over, took it once again once night fell. The whole time he was trying to decide how he was going to die. A bullet would be quicker than he deserved. An intentional overdose on whatever he could get his hands on was out of the question, too. He wanted to be in his right mind when it happened.

Two days, eleven hours and forty six minutes after Carla died he sat in his room, knife in hand, watching with a sick sort of fascination as he bled out. It was slow, just like he wanted. He had plenty of time to think, to reflect, to reaffirm just how much he deserved this. How much he wanted this. Visions of women and children running to their deaths in front of Coyote Tail Ridge rushed through his head. He heard them screaming, saw them drop, one by one. He never stopped pulling the trigger. He saw Carla, magnified through his scope, holding back tears and gnawing on her bottom lip like she did when she was upset, saw skull fragments and brain matter paint the legionnaire standing behind her, saw her sink to her knees and then fall, face down (_oh God the baby she's crushing the baby)_, blood pooling on the ground around her head like a halo.

It took too long. The wound in his wrist started to clot. He'd fucked up somehow. Didn't cut deep enough. He dropped the knife, changed out of his bloodied shirt and took his shift. Never did bother to try and get rid of the stain on the carpet. Didn't even pick up the knife.

Every time he slept he saw Carla. The gaping hole in between her eyes never stopped bleeding, no matter how long he stared. She screamed at him. Called him a monster. A murderer. A fucking baby killer. She never told him anything he didn't already know so he stopped sleeping. He didn't talk to anybody. Time stopped passing. The world just occasionally got brighter and darker over and over again.

He didn't know how long it was before Norah came barging into his life. Not too long, he'd guessed. Not long enough for him to drop from exhaustion. Not long enough for his wrist to scar over completely. Funny that she didn't notice the mark right off the bat.

Boone didn't quite know how to explain Norah. She showed up out of the blue one day, dressed in worn out leather armor, armed with a flimsy rifle that couldn't kill an ant but still overconfident and naïve and trying to fix everybody's problems for them, his included.

He made an old woman's head explode three feet away from her and she still asked him to come with her. It was the first of many times where he would doubt her sanity. She was likable and genuinely well-intentioned, but 'normal' was not a word he would associate her with. Ever.

She had some of the stickiest fingers in the Mojave. It would have been easy to justify it if she only stole the bare necessities when they were running low and didn't have any caps, but how can you justify the toaster? That tattered pre-war dress she never wore? The goddamned army of gnomes that she'd insisted he carry when they got too heavy for her? Eventually he had to face the facts. He was traveling with a borderline kleptomaniac.

Fate had a hell of a sense of humor.

So did Norah, it turned out. She managed to injure the both of them once because she thought it might be funny to kill a bark scorpion with a missile launcher. It was the closest he'd ever come to yelling at her. She'd apologized, chastised him for being a killjoy, then helped him tend to his wounds like nothing had happened.

That's about the time he realized that she would get him killed one of these days. He wouldn't go out in a blaze of glory, taking hundreds of Legion bastards as he went, or alone with a bottle of whiskey and a gun loaded with a single bullet. His death would be bloody, unusual and it would involve Norah.

She talked a lot. Reminded him a little of Carla in that way. Even when she had nothing to talk about she still went on and on about absolutely nothing, talking just for the sake of talking, trying to fill in the silence. When she wasn't talking, Mr. New Vegas was. She made it a habit of turning her radio on when she ran out of things to say. The only truly silent moments were when she slept. He tried to fall asleep before her most nights. The quiet left him to his own thoughts, and he didn't like those very much.

She also coddled him. His own mother had never coddled him. The NCR sure as hell never coddled him. Not even Carla coddled him. It wasn't something he was used to, so when he was wounded after a particularly tough fight and she was suddenly next to him, wide-eyed with a stimpak in hand, asking if he was alright, did it hurt a lot, did he need to rest a while, it threw him for a loop. She listened when he talked and never judged. She told him he was a good man, that he did the right thing for Carla and the baby, that he was only following orders at Bitter Springs. It didn't stop the nightmares but it made him feel better, at least for a little while.

It was three months after Carla died that they started with whatever it was that was going on between them. Three months. His wife hadn't even had time to completely decompose and he was in bed with another woman. The guilt wasn't unexpected by any means but it still managed to sneak up on him. Left a bad taste in his mouth and a nagging, tugging feeling in his chest. He didn't sleep so well that night. He'd tried to close himself off from Norah, forget it ever happened, but she was nothing if not persistent. She finally got fed up after a couple days and plopped down close to him by the campfire they'd made for the night.

_He moved away from her, just a few inches, enough for her to notice. She gave him a look and started drumming her fingers on the ground impatiently._

"_Alright, look. I'm not going to let this drive a big awkward wedge between us." She glanced his way and raised an eyebrow, knowingly. "I'm not going to pretend like nothing happened, either. We had sex. I liked it. I _know_ you liked it. I'm game to keep doing it if you are."_

"_I'm not." _

_She didn't look convinced. "Okay. Why?"_

_He didn't say anything, just stared into the fire, jaw clenched. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and the rhythmic drumming of her fingers on the ground. The drumming came to an abrupt stop and she scooted closer to him, maneuvered her head around until she could catch his eye. Didn't say anything, just stared, then she reached forward and plucked his sunglasses off his face. She threw them somewhere over her shoulder. Before he had time to frown at her for it, she was kissing him._

_He had considered pulling away. He pulled her closer instead. Did that make him a weaker man? Probably._

To Norah, it had been a green light. Hell, maybe it was. He didn't know what he wanted, but to say that he didn't…care about her would be a lie. If he wanted to be honest with himself, she'd become a big part of his life the second she put his beret on back in Novac. The fact that they'd been running around the desert together, saving each others' asses damn near every day for over two months now didn't help that.

So when she kissed him again the next day, he kissed back. When she jumped him later that week, he was an active participant. The guilt was back full force as soon as he'd caught his breath after, though.

It was turning into a cycle, and he wasn't sure if the ups were worth the downs.

He felt a jostle behind him, followed by an impressive string of curse words and he glanced over his shoulder.

"Why don't I just take it off?"

"No! That would be admitting defeat."

Norah took a step back, crossed her arms and frowned. "You're too tall. I can't see what I'm doing. Crouch down."

Boone sighed and obligingly crouched. Norah had overstuffed her pack, again, and was having trouble carrying all her stuff, so she had him play pack brahmin. Again.

She hummed a song he didn't recognize as she stuffed his pack full of odds and ends (emphasis on 'odds'), and it was almost full to bursting when he finally spoke up, irritably. "Gonna be hard covering you when I can't _move my legs."_

"Oh, don't be a baby. Here, I'll lighten the load for you."

He watched as she threw her most defensively sound armor to the ground. It landed with a loud, metallic _CLANG_.

"I don't look good in it," she explained.

Seven gnomes and a battered BB gun with no ammo stayed in his pack. He felt a headache coming on.

He stood, and Norah gave her pack an experimental lift before nodding in satisfaction. "Much better."

There was a beat of almost comfortable silence, then she reached up and snatched his beret off his head, wordlessly.

He stared. She stared back, smugly.

"…I'd really like my beret back, please."

She held it out of reach and stood on her toes, tilting her head up so that their lips were centimeters apart, then raised her eyebrows expectantly.

He closed the gap without even thinking about it. She replaced his beret, wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself flush against him.

One thing that could be said about Norah; she sure as hell wasn't shy.

They'd been near a run-down shack, so it wasn't hard to stumble in so they'd at least be away from the elements. There was a bed, if a tiny mattress thrown haphazardly into the corner counted as a bed, but they hadn't made it there, just collapsing onto the floor as soon as they made it inside.

The cycle began again as soon as his heartbeat started returning back to normal. That near-debilitating sense of guilt slowly creeping up on him was almost familiar by now. Next to him, Norah shifted, trying to get comfortable.

"Hey."

She sounded contemplative, and that scared him a little.

"What?"

"How old are you?"

He blinked. That one hadn't been expected. "What?"

She pushed herself up, onto her elbows, looking more and more invested in this conversation by the second. "How old are you? God, how fucking weird is it that I haven't asked that before?"

Yes, it was weird. But it was Norah. He'd learned to stop questioning it. "Twenty-six."

She was leaning over him in the blink of an eye, studying him. "Holy shit, really? I thought for sure you'd be at least thirty."

The hell was that supposed to mean?

She caught the slight frown that had started on his face and backed off, choosing to lean back on her hands instead, still staring, curiously. "You just…act older."

"I feel older." It came out sounding a lot bitterer than he'd intended. Huh.

"Understandable." She was moving again, laying back down, draping an arm over him. He wondered what her track record was for sitting still while awake.

Silence. For about five seconds.

"Hey Boone?"

"What?"

"Talk dirty to me next time."

"Absolutely not."

"Buzzkill."


	3. Chapter 3

_Hi, there. As you may have noticed, I changed the title. …I like this one better. :3_

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><p>Boone called it running in half-cocked. He got irritated with her a lot for it, said she didn't care about her own safety.<p>

It wasn't true, obviously. She was just eager to do anything that broke any sort of monotony she happened to be falling into at the time. What's that, doctor? You want me to go check out a mysterious vault chock full of horrifying killer plants? I'd love to!

You want me to take out invisible, deadly demons you know nothing about in your basement? Why, I'd be insulted if you _didn't_!

Risk my life in a Fiend trap to retrieve your husband's body? I don't see why not!

Besides…she liked to help.

Admittedly, it wasn't the healthiest lifestyle, but a small part of her couldn't help but be just a little bit flattered that he cared enough to get angry with her for putting herself in danger.

Then again, he could just be annoyed for his own sake. After all, her putting herself in danger tended to put him in danger, too.

She chose to believe the former because it made her happier.

Norah bit her lip and took a nervous glance behind her, taking special note of Boone's clenched jaw and his especially tense-looking shoulders. Yep, he was pissed.

He was still following her, though. That had to count for something, right?

She slowed until she was walking next to him.

"…I'm sorry." She offered tentatively.

"You almost got yourself killed again." He wasn't looking at her. In fact, he seemed to be making it a point to look anywhere _but_ her.

She lifted a hand to her shoulder out of reflex and managed to not wince at the sharp pain that greeted her there. Private Morales had just seemed so _sad_. What was she supposed to do, tell her no? The Fiends hadn't been _that_ hard to take out. Yes, it had gotten ugly when those legionnaires showed up, guns blazing, and she had a few new bullet holes to show for it (including her brand new battle scar in her shoulder) but it had worked out fine. Estaban's body was safe and sound with the NCR troops, Private Morales was as happy as she could be, given the situation, and thanks to some drugs and several stimpaks they were both alive.

"It's just a few bullet wounds."

Turns out it was the wrong thing to say. He stopped walking and took of his sunglasses. She wasn't sure if he was squinting at her or glaring.

"Why do you do that?"

"What?" she crossed her arms over her chest, unconsciously bracing herself for whatever verbal onslaught he had planned.

"You don't take anything seriously. I almost think you don't understand that you could die at any minute out here if you're not careful."

"I _do_ understand that!"

"You sure as hell don't act like it."

He wasn't quite as pissed as when he'd been after what she liked to call "the Annabelle incident" but he was getting there. He crossed his arms, mimicking her stance. "You're not…you're not stable."

She raised her eyebrows at the hypocrisy of the statement and took a step forward. "_I'm_ not stable? Real fucking funny, Boone. How's your wrist healing up, by the way?"

The words came tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them, and just like that, unspoken rule #1 had been broken. She knew. He knew she knew. They never, ever talked about it. They went out of their way to avoid the subject if needed.

She clamped a hand over her mouth right after she said it and watched through wide eyes as he took a deep breath.

"Fair enough," he said softly.

Norah felt like the most despicable person on the planet.

"Shit. No. I'm sorry." She took another step forward. "I'm so sorry, Boone. I didn't mean it. That was…that was fucked up."

"Yeah." He said after a beat of silence.

She couldn't tell if he was accepting her apology or agreeing with her, but at least he was talking. She took a few more steps toward him, until she was next to him, then plopped down on the ground cross-legged, tugging him down next to her.

The sun was starting to set, cooling the air and, ultimately, Norah's skin. She needed to bring a fucking coat with her one of these days.

They sat in not-so-comfortable silence for a moment before she spoke up in little more than a whisper.

"Did it hurt?"

She'd said it without meaning to. Boone became very still and she felt the sudden urge to bang her head against a hard surface for being so goddamned _stupid_. He wasn't going to reply. Of course he wouldn't reply. _Fuck, Norah, you're tactless. You have the subtlety of a fucking deathclaw with a__mini-nuke._ She sighed and put her face in her hands.

"Fuck. I'm sorry. I need to learn when to shut up."

"I don't remember a lot of it." He kept his eyes forward as he talked, sounding increasingly uncomfortable with every passing word. "I didn't really…feel anything. Not physically. I just wanted it to be over. Wanted it to go…faster."

She realized she'd been gaawking at him from behind her fingers, dropped her hands into her lap and chewed on the inside of her cheek, not quite sure how to proceed. She couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound stupid or cliché, but she wasn't about to blow this off. He was talking about it. He was letting her in. She opted to lay her head on his shoulder instead. He felt like if he got any tenser he would snap in two.

"We should start heading home." She said after a long pause.

"Yeah." Boone brought his arm around her shoulder after what seemed to be a moment of deliberation. It was a rare case of him touching her outside of sex and she reveled in it.

Neither of them moved.

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><p>The lights of New Vegas were a comfort to her. When they finally came into view, her steps became just a little bit lighter. She turned to grin at Boone and grabbed a fistful of his shirt to tug him along faster. Running around the Wastelands was a nice way to pass the time, but it was good to come home.<p>

They went their separate ways in Freeside. Boone was headed for the Lucky 38, ready for some real food and a good night's sleep after a long day of walking.

Norah's first stop was, naturally, The Wrangler. She'd been missing her drinking buddy.

Cass was sitting at the bar, nursing a whiskey when she walked in. She took a seat on the stool next to her without a word and leaned over to give her a clumsy one-armed hug by way of a greeting before ordering a drink of her own.

"Jesus. I was starting to think you wouldn't come back."

Cass had tagged along with her for a while, but then they'd arrived in Freeside. Upon stepping into the Wrangler for the first time, she fell in love.

The prospect of spending her days under the same roof as a sexbot named Fisto and all the booze she could ever drink had been too tempting to turn down, so she grew roots there, spending her night amongst Freeside's most colorful drunks and her days sleeping it off at the Lucky 38.

"Sorry. You know me. I kept getting distracted by new and exciting things on the way back from The Fort."

Not a total lie. Getting up close and personal with Boone's anatomy _was _new and exciting.

"Oh. Right." Cass set down her drink and turned to face her. "The Fort. You know, a little birdy told me a couple crazy fucks busted their way in and killed Caesar. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Norah pouted. "Mr. New Vegas called me a crazy fuck?"

"No such luck. You were an 'unknown party'."

"After all the interesting shit I give that guy to talk about. That's just ungrateful." Half of her Rum and Nuka disappeared with one impressive gulp and she welcomed that familiar rush of warmth that came with it.

Cass hummed in acknowledgment. "So where's Boone?"

"Probably sleeping by now. I had him carry all my heavy stuff. Poor guy was beat by the time we got here." She polished off the rest of her drink and tapped the bar for another.

Cass wrinkled her nose. "'Heavy stuff' means a shitload of gnomes, right?"

"Don't judge, they're adorable."

"They're _creepy._"

"Obviously you have no soul."

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><p>The suite was empty.<p>

And quiet.

Boone wasn't used to the quiet anymore. He couldn't sleep.

With a sigh, he heaved himself out of bed and dressed. There was an impressive liquor collection somewhere in the kitchen with his name on it.

Some time and a considerable amount of vodka later had him sitting at the kitchen table, feeling dizzy and listening to the quiet.

Only it wasn't very quiet anymore. Carla was in his left ear, telling him the baby would have had his eyes, _not that you'll ever see them you fucking murderer,_ HQ was in his right, telling him to keep shooting.

There was a brief moment where he thought of getting up and walking to Norah's room. He knew she kept a pistol in her desk and the thought of putting it to good use was starting to tempt him, but Carla called him a coward so he stayed put.

The quiet was slowly suffocating him. The voices were getting louder and louder and had turned into a dull roar that made his head throb.

The quiet was interrupted by the distinctive _ding _of the elevator, then shattered into a million pieces as Norah came stumbling in, almost tripping and falling on her face in the process, giggling at herself for it in a drunken haze. The voices stopped.

She staggered into the kitchen and grinned when she saw him sitting there, then sat next to him, taking special pains to lean against him. Her respect for personal space went from minimal to nonexistent when she was drunk. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."

He didn't answer. The voices were gone, the world had gotten just a little less dark, and he had an unhinged courier with a fondness for big guns and petty thievery to thank for it.

She was chaos embodied, bright and loud and manic, and she took the quiet away with all her racket. Made him feel like something other than a killer. Made it just a little bit easier to sleep at night.

He realized he was staring. She'd furrowed her brow and was asking if he was alright.

It was a hell of a question.

No. He wasn't alright. He was far from it.

But she was here and the voices weren't, so he figured he was as close as he would ever get.


	4. Chapter 4

_So, I'll go ahead and apologize right now for how choppy my chapters are. The writing process is super tough for me with no foreseeable plot developing. I've got a couple ideas, though. Here's hoping it'll gradually get better from here on out. _

_Until then, here's another chapter where absolutely nothing happens~!  
><em>

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><p>There was a pistol in his room back in Novac.<p>

Nothing special, just your run of the mill 9mm. Not a hell of a lot of punch behind it but it was lightweight; concealable…could save your life if you were in a tight spot. He'd tried to teach Carla to shoot it back when they first got married, mostly for his own peace of mind. Wanted to know she had a way to protect herself if she ever needed it, for whatever reason.

Carla had laughed at him, handed the gun back and given him a big hug. "You're so silly, Craig," she told him, "I don't need to know how to shoot a gun. I have you to protect me."

_I have you to protect me._

She said it a lot in his dreams, happy and smiling and unscathed. It hurt more than when screamed at him.

Last night had been one of those nights. She'd looked so real, right down to the dimples in her cheeks. He almost had himself convinced that the past couple months had been the dream and he'd finally woken up, and then his eyes opened. The real world fell into place with an almost serene sort of brutality and he could suddenly feel the impressive hangover he'd subjected himself to and the girl who wasn't his wife draped over him and breathing into his neck, dead to the world.

The pounding in his head and the oncoming bout of nausea he knew was coming was nothing compared to that sinking feeling in his stomach that he was far too used to, and he stared at the ceiling until his eyes strained and the headache threatened to turn into a migraine, just trying to compress that feeling, push it away, force it down. He didn't notice when Norah started to stir.

Sometimes, you just don't feel like waking up yet. You try and fight it but your consciousness tugs you, kicking and screaming, to the waking world like you're on a leash. For a stubborn moment Norah refused to open her eyes, hoping that maybe if she laid still long enough she could drift back off, but the chances of that happening slipped away as the minutes ticked by and she gradually became more aware of her surroundings. Somewhere in the suite, a clock was ticking monotonously. She was practically lying on Boone and could feel his chest rise and fall with every breath he took. Nope. She wasn't going back to sleep this morning. She sighed in defeat and opened her eyes. _Stupid consciousness._

"Morning," she greeted her bedmate with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, which wasn't a whole lot in all reality. He heard her but didn't bother to reply. The emotional pain was dissipating bit by bit, replacing itself with the physical pain—that damned pounding in his head. He could handle that. Preferred it, even. He couldn't afford to break his concentration now when that feeling was almost gone. His eyes didn't stray from his focal point on the ceiling—a small, jagged hairline crack, barely big enough to see unless you looked for it. By now he was exacerbating the headache on purpose.

"Jesus, Boone, could you stop talking my ear off? I can't hear myself think." There was no real weight behind her words, they just kind of floated out of her mouth without any sort of conviction. The fact that she'd been awake for an entire minute and she hadn't started wiggling around like a cazador with ADD did a better job at catching his attention. He hazarded a glance her way to see her staring at him, just about to cross over into gawking territory. She couldn't quite help it. It always happened when Boone was without his beret and sunglasses. He took them off just rarely enough for it to be fascinating to her, just how different he looked. It was hard to get over it. She liked him either way but at some point the hat and glasses had almost become a part of his personality. No matter how little he was wearing, he never looked completely naked while he had them on.

Cass started mumbling in her sleep and the sound filtered through the thin walls. Norah took it as her cue to get up. She took a minute to disentangle herself from Boone and stood, with a bit of difficulty thanks to the last bit of alcohol still coursing through her veins from last night's attempts to give herself alcohol poisoning, and started to dress.

"I've got to get out of here before Cass wakes up," she told Boone conversationally. A few moments passed before she realized how that must have sounded to him and she hastily added, "Not that I'm ashamed to be sleeping with you. Hell, if Cass wasn't practically family I wouldn't have any qualms against fucking you in the same room as her."

Sadly, he believed it. He had just enough time to force that mental image out of his mind with immediate and extreme prejudice before she started talking again; picking her shirt up off the floor, starting to put it on, realizing it was inside out, fixing it, all the while talking a mile a minute. "But she's Cass and she _is _practically family and if she found out, we would be subjected to a very uncomfortable conversation afterwards." She paused to pull the shirt over her head. "And dick jokes. Lots of dick jokes."

He let out a sharp exhalation of breath that was more or less a laugh and she looked over at him to see the ghost of a smile playing on his face. She felt emboldened and almost pathetically proud of herself for getting him to show some sign of amusement and walked over to him to drop a quick, almost casual kiss on his lips. It was the kind that normal couples shared without even thinking about it. A 'hello, goodbye, good morning' kiss.

"Come on out when you're ready. I'm sure Cass has more than a few hangover remedies she'd be willing to pass on."

Perceptive. He hadn't shown any signs of pain but she could still somehow tell. Not a lot got past her. He'd told her once that she made a good spotter and her ego was still overinflated from it. He watched her as she cracked the door open and peeked out into the suite, just to make sure the coast was clear, and then she was gone, the door shutting quietly behind her. Silence reigned for all of two minutes before the sound of running water could be heard from the bathroom, and then Norah's out of tune singing as she sloshed around in the bathroom, punctuated here and there by Cass talking intermittently in her sleep. It all blended together into an indistinct hum, wonderfully distracting.

He didn't miss the quiet one bit.

* * *

><p>Higher ground was good. Safe. Even a good three feet off the ground she could feel the heat trying to scorch her legs. The kitchen floor was a burning, bubbling death trap, sure to destroy anything and everything unlucky enough to touch it—<p>

A pair of feet stepped into view. Illusion ruined.

"Morning, Cass."

Cass was blinking up at her sleepily, making a valiant effort to not look surprised. "Good morning."

A moment of silence ticked by awkwardly. Cass opened her mouth to speak, closed it, tried again.

"You're…"

"Standing on the table, yes."

She took a second to chew on the inside of her cheek, glanced down at the floor, as if searching for some sign of danger there, then gave up. "May I ask why?"

"The floor is lava."

"Ah."


	5. Chapter 5

_So, after a bit of a delay, here's this monster chapter (by my standards, at least). _

_I'm going out of town for like three weeks. If I'm able to update I will but, you know, don't hold your breath. Until then, I love you all. :3_

* * *

><p>"Hey, Boone?"<p>

"What?"

Norah had her nose buried in a book called _Stress and the Modern Refugee: A Primer_ and wasn't bothering to watch where she was walking. He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her away from the cactus she was about to run into and she offered up a distracted "thanks" without looking up.

"Have you ever heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?"

Boone tensed, and his voice took on a sort of wariness when he responded. "Yeah."

"Ever think you might have it?"

"No." his answer was immediate, firm and more than a little defensive and for the first time since cracking open the book she looked up, brow furrowed.

"But a lot of these symptoms they list here—"

"Drop it."

His voice was as calm as it usually was, but he was clearly well on his way to being pissed, if the set of his jaw and the sudden tenseness of his shoulders was anything to go by. She shut up and dropped her eyes back to the book. Telling him that avoidance was listed as a symptom seemed like an indisputably bad idea. They walked on in silence.

They'd initially planned to stay in New Vegas for a while, but the gambling and drinking did nothing to hold Norah's attention this time around. A week after arriving, she and Cass shared their customary offer/decline spiel ("Wanna come kill things with us?" "Nah, I'll stay here and watch drunk people fall down.") and then they were back on the road, headed toward Bitter Springs, of all places. Their last excursion there had gone well, surprise Legion raid notwithstanding, but she was still hesitant to bring Boone back. He started to get annoyed somewhere around the fifteenth time she asked him if he was _absolutely sure_ he could handle going back though, so to Bitter Springs they'd gone and not a moment too soon, either. The place had been in shambles.

They were low on supplies, even lower on reinforcements, their only doctor knew absolutely nothing about pediatrics or psychological treatment of any sort and somebody was killing off refugees and NCR personnel at random. Nobody else was going to get off their ass and fix it, so off Norah went, scolding Great Kahn snipers, nearly getting her face bitten off by nightstalkers in search of supplies in dilapidated old caves and walking from one end of the Mojave to the other to beg the NCR for a few good men.

By sunset, they'd finally gotten around to helping Lieutenant Markland, the inept medic. Apparently the only person in Nevada who sold any educational materials on pediatrics _or_ psychotherapy was a price gouging bastard named Blake. Norah refused to pay upwards of 40 caps and instead stole the needed books off the shelves while his back was turned, citing principles for her own personal validation. It made it easier to write off the exasperated look Boone gave her as they walked away from The Crimson Caravan as 'uncalled for'.

By the time they'd dropped off the books and found a place to make camp for the night, it was either very, very early or very, very late, depending on how you liked to look at it. The Mojave had gotten dark, quiet and cold and Norah felt her mood plummet with the sudden lack of things to occupy herself with.

Sometimes, colors were just a little brighter. Songs were a little bit catchier, food tasted a little bit better, sex was a little bit more earth shattering. It was like her body was drugging her from the inside out, filling her with a sort of exhilaration that was both alien and completely natural, and if she didn't sing and dance and laugh and run and bounce off the walls she would explode with all the happiness she was keeping pent up inside her. Suddenly she was smart and witty and charming and drop-dead gorgeous. Money had no object, nothing had to be censored and rules were _meant_ to be broken. She felt like she could take on the world.

Of course, all good things must end. That's how the saying goes, right? It was a stupid, cruelly accurate saying and she hated it, because it _did _end, and it ended hard. Her world, which had been so colorful just hours before, would slowly but surely dissolve into dark, dull shades of grey. That euphoria that had filled her so completely would go away, leaving an empty feeling and a profound sense of longing in its wake. There was no dancing, no laughing, no smiling, and even the happiest songs Mr. New Vegas had to offer only served to make her feel more miserable. Normally she found somewhere to hole up when the colors went away, a dark room with no sharp objects where she could curl up and be alone and ride it out. Of course, that wasn't an option today. Because _Norah_ got bored. _Norah_ needed variety in her life. _Norah_ had to get her way or she pissed and moaned like a petulant, sniveling child for days on end. _Norah_ was a goddamned idiot when she was happy and now _Norah_ was out in the middle of bumfuck Egypt with nothing but a sleeping sniper, a disgraceful little fire that was doing shit to keep her warm, and dozens of beady little gnome eyes staring her down.

The gnomes.

The fucking _gnomes_.

Cutest fucking things ever when she was happy. Every last one of them looked beseechingly at her with their creepy little painted on eyes and _Norah_ just couldn't fucking leave them there. They took up space and they were heavy, but somehow they were more important than food, water, ammo, armor and the rest of the little odds and ends that kept them from dying on a daily basis.

She was such a goddamned idiot.

The gnomes were doing a good job of reminding her of it, too. In the back of her mind, she felt like they were mocking her. _Thanks for the free ride, you stupid bitch! Your pack sure is cushy without any of those hard, pointy necessities jostling around! _She imagined they had high pitched, nasally voices and a uniformly high pitched, nasally laugh. She hated them.

Why the fuck was she so cold?

* * *

><p>"<em>I get so lonesome when you're gone."<em>

_The monorail station was bustling with activity. The low murmur of the collective crowd was occasionally punctuated by the distinct hiss of the monorail as it left the station. NCR personnel milled about, duffel bags in hand, ready to go back on duty. In the midst of this stood Craig and Carla. _

_Carla bit her lip, watching all the other soldiers go, hoping it would distract her mind enough so that she wouldn't break down in the middle of the terminal. Again. "Promise me you'll write this time. Just so I know you're still alive out there."_

"_I promise." _

_She risked a glance toward him and hated herself just a little when her eyes started to fill with tears. She used to think there was nothing sexier than a man in uniform. Now that she was in love with one, the uniform represented loneliness, weeks upon weeks of relentless worrying; feeling like her heart's been ripped out of her chest and stomped on from the time she watches him walk away right up until he's back. Her lip was starting to feel raw but she didn't dare stop chewing on it. It was the only thing keeping her from losing it and embarrassing both her and Craig. She sniffled and he wrapped his arms around her._

"_Don't cry," he said, "I'll be back…nothing could keep me away from you." that last bit was said with some difficulty, sounding like it had to be forced out, but it gave her butterflies anyway._

_She balled up a fist and thumped him on the chest even as she pressed closer to him. "Jerk." she said, "Why did you have to go and make me love you?"_

_For her, it had been love at first sight. He'd looked like a fish out of water that night on the strip, uncomfortable and on edge and so different than the rest of the men there. Now, some months later, she'd finally gotten up the nerve to tell him. He didn't have a ring and he didn't get down on one knee like she used to imagine when she was a little girl, but he proposed to her right then and there anyway, and to Carla it was absolutely perfect._

* * *

><p>Entirely against his will, Boone woke up. That empty ache that was becoming more and more frequent was there in an instant, and he tried to force out those last remaining bits of the dream (memory?) by distracting himself with whatever racket Norah would be making about now.<p>

The problem was that Norah _wasn't _making any racket. He listened for a moment, trying to catch at least a bit of radio feedback, but there was nothing but the steady crackling of a fire. She always had some kind of noise surrounding her. She couldn't even sleep unless the radio was on; he ended up turning it off most nights so they wouldn't attract any unwanted visitors. Something was wrong.

He turned over, toward the sound of the fire, expecting to see a body, or (_or the ghost of a sneering old lady with a bill of sale_) a deserted camp, but she was there, sitting by the fire, unscathed. Whatever relief he felt was short lived, though. It was too quiet. Why was it so quiet? He got up—there wouldn't be any more sleep after that dream, anyway—and walked over. She didn't look up when he stepped into view but she did acknowledge his presence with a sad little smile. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and she had her wrapped her arms around them, curling in on herself as much as possible. She gestured to the fire in front of her with an incline of her head.

"Little bastards burn up pretty good. It must be the varnish."

Boone's brow furrowed, her words effectively confusing the hell out of him. That is, until he looked over to the fire that she couldn't seem to take her eyes off of. Upwards of a dozen pointy little hats were being engulfed with flames. Varnished, perpetually happy faces were blackening and peeling as they burned, slowly but effectively. She was burning her fucking gnomes. He was almost thrilled—as thrilled as he could get, anyway—the gnomes were the bane of his existence.

He had to remind himself that this was _Norah_. Norah didn't just sit in total silence. She wasn't distant, she wasn't unobtrusive, and she wouldn't burn all her gnomes after she took the time to _name_ every goddamned one of them.

"What's going on?"

"They're fucking stupid and I'm fucking stupid for making you carry them all over the place when you're already being weighed down by shit that we actually need," she said. She looked up at him for the first time and there was the distinctive shine of unshed tears in her eyes. Norah had been punched, shot, cut, burned, irradiated, damn near blown up and called every name in the book and he had never, ever seen her cry. Yeah, something was definitely wrong.

"I'm sorry," she continued, "I don't know what I was thinking."

She bit her lip. It was hard not to think of Carla.

"I'm loud and impractical and fucking stupid and all I do is get us both hurt. The only reason I'm not dead or some legionnaire's bitch right now is because of you. I owe you everything and all I do is fuck you up more." Norah was outright bawling now. She unwrapped her arms from around her legs and reached up to clutch at her hair. "I know how much it kills you. I can tell you feel guilty every time after we…" she looked up at him again helplessly, "it _kills_ you, Boone, and I keep on initiating it and asking for it because I'm selfish, and I—"

She stopped short and took a deep breath, trying to rein herself in some. She wiped at the tears that were now freely falling down her cheeks, and then she was talking again in a low, controlled voice.

"If you died, I don't think I could keep going. I have friends. I have people I care about. If they died I'd be devastated, but you…you're special. I think I would go so far as to say you're the most important person in the world to me. I need you and all I'm doing is _killing _you."

The dam broke. She started sobbing. _Sobbing._ He sat down next to her awkwardly, not really sure what he was supposed to do. After a moment's deliberation he put a hand on her arm, half expecting her to throw her arms around him and press close like she did whenever he initiated any sort of physical contact, ever, but she stayed where she was, hunched over and sobbing into her hands. In time, the sobs tapered off into pitiful sounding little hiccups, and she raised her head to look up at him. He'd never seen her like this, all puffy eyed and vulnerable. For the first time, he found himself instigating a kiss between them, because he couldn't stand that broken, hopeless look on her face, because he didn't know what else to do, and because on some level, he knew he needed her, too, but not like this. He needed her to be bright and lively and chaotic. He needed her to keep on keeping the quiet away.

What had started out gently, almost calm, even, escalated fast. She fisted her hands into his shirt desperately and the kiss turned frantic. She tugged him down on top of her as she laid back on the ground, needing the contact and not really giving a damn if she got sand in her hair as long as she got it.

She tugged at his shirt, he unzipped her shorts. They both slept well that night.

When Boone woke up the next morning, the first sound that greeted him was Norah's humming. The girl really couldn't carry a tune to save her life, but it was better than that silence. He opened his eyes to find her crouched by the fire again, this time cooking some meaty looking monstrosity over the fire. He got up and walked over and she greeted him with a smile that didn't look even a little bit forced. She looked like her again. The relief that came with that observation was unexpected but welcome nonetheless.

"Morning!" she chirped, holding up the pan of the questionable stuff. "Gecko?"

A master chef she was not. He took an unconscious step back. "No. Thanks."

A short, mildly awkward silence went by, and she bit her lip. He wished she would stop doing that.

"Listen," she began hesitantly, "I'm, um…I'm really sorry about last night." she took a brief, mournful glance at the fire pit. A charred gnome hand reached out from the rubble. It was almost funny. "I, uh…I get like that sometimes. I don't know why. It's not that often. I'm usually able to barricade myself in somewhere. Hide it, you know?"

"…yeah. I know." of course he knew. Boone hid things with the best of 'em, mostly behind a pretty impressive poker face. Norah focused her attention to the gecko she'd attempted (valiantly) to cook and grimaced, more than ready to change the subject.

"This isn't edible, is it?"

"Not a chance."

* * *

><p>They'd somehow found their way to the 188 Trading Post and decided to stop in. They were out of pretty much everything Mojave-necessary and needed to stock up, anyway. Norah had just finished arguing that, no, 15 caps per bottle was <em>not<em> an acceptable price for water when she saw her. Dressed in what was essentially a burlap sack from head to toe, hair covered, staring right back at her. Norah hadn't seen her here before and, of course, this was the only incentive she needed to walk over.

"Hi! I'm Veronica. I live in a hole in the ground."

Friendly, not shy and totally comfortable saying off the wall shit with absolutely no context. Veronica was a woman after her own heart. She had to one-up her.

"I'm Norah. I live in a giant roulette wheel with a mentally disturbed sniper and an alcoholic named Cass."

And so, the (strictly platonic) love was instantaneous and mutual. Veronica left the 188 with her and Boone and never looked back.


	6. Chapter 6

_Hi, there. =D_

_I took a while to update. As an apology, look at all the words I wrote~!_

_Also, sorry for how rushed the ending is. I figured I'd taken long enough. x.x_

* * *

><p>Cass was a woman who could appreciate novelty. With the same-old, same-old lifestyle that embodied the Mojave, new and exciting things didn't come around every day and she wasn't blind enough, content enough or stupid enough to ignore them when they happened along. She'd grown bored of sitting by herself and drinking away her sorrows with every other hard-up sap with a sob story when Norah came prancing by, Boone in tow, and had consequently jumped at the chance to join her when the opportunity arose. When rolling around in irradiated filth and getting into shooting matches with all the things her mother had warned her about as a child somehow got monotonous, she decided the Wrangler was as good a place as any to entertain herself for a while. Eventually she learned how to pick out Fisto's customers just from the expressions of hazy, satisfied shame on their faces as they stumbled out of the back room, and then she was bored again. As luck would have it, Norah came back into town just as Freeside was starting to get unbearable, and wouldn't you know it, she had a shiny new novelty with her. She waltzed into the Wrangler like she owned the place, as per usual, flanked on either side by Boone and a wide-eyed burlap-sack-clad creature she introduced as Veronica. Cass decided it was time to dust off her traveling boots and hit the road with her drinking buddy once again, which led to her current predicament.<p>

She could handle sleeping on the hard ground; God knows she'd slept in worse conditions—with worse people—but her present company, coupled with her present sleeping and traveling arrangements found her in the middle of an all girl sandwich ("For warmth!" Norah had declared with just a little too much enthusiasm). This, understand, is not the predicament. Cass was perfectly content playing with both sets of equipment as long as the holder of said equipment knew what to do with it. The predicament was that Veronica was a cuddler and Norah, once she'd finished tossing and turning, had decided that the most comfortable place to put her bony fucking elbow was right in her side. She couldn't very well subtly shift away while being spooned by the girl whose main purpose in their little group was to punch things off of other things so, reasonably, Norah became the recipient of a spite-fueled kick to the shin.

Even while half asleep, her response time was downright impressive. A "what the fuck, Cass?" and a retaliatory kick was sent her way in under two seconds.

"If you don't want me to kick you then keep your parts away from my parts."

"Christ, what are you, five?"

"Now, kids, keep your hands to yourself or I'll turn this cuddle train around." Veronica's sleepy chiding managed to quell the 5am grudge match to some extent and Norah was faced with the cruel realization that she wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight.

"God, I hate you guys." she forced herself to get up and made her way over to the fire a few yards away. She plopped down on the ground next to her pack and immediately started rifling around in it.

"What are you doing?" she damn near jumped out of her skin and turned to the source of the voice. It was Boone. Of course it was Boone. He hadn't moved from his spot since they'd finished making camp. She brought her free hand up to her chest, a little embarrassed to find that her heart was pounding.

"Do I have to tie a bell around your neck?" she scolded lightly, then pulled her arm out of the pack, bringing a flask with her. "Cass kicked me. I'm drinking all of her booze in retaliation." She made to unscrew the lid of the flask when she felt a calloused hand clamp around her wrist. The fire reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses, making it impossible to see past them. Even so, she knew he was watching her like a hawk.

"You can drink all you want when we're somewhere you can let your guard down. Not here."

"I hope you realize you're a killjoy." Norah snipped. She obliged him nonetheless, dropping the flask back into her bag brusquely. "You shouldn't wear your sunglasses while it's dark out, Mr. Safety. It's terrible for your vision."

Boone dug a cigarette from his pocket and lit up by way of a response, and Norah frowned. She'd been asleep for hours and he hadn't moved from his spot. Even though she couldn't much of his face, he looked tired. "You haven't slept at all, have you?"

He took a deep drag, pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled before answering; a clear, concise, "No."

"Another one of those nights, huh?" It was fairly common. Some nights, Boone just didn't feel like sleeping. Nightmares had been a theory of hers for a while. If she were in his shoes, she'd have them, too. _Stress and the Modern Refugee_ had given her another theory, though. The book called it hyperarousal, something nowhere near as sexy as it sounded. It was an all-encompassing term that boasted symptoms ranging from hypervigilance to insomnia. Hyperarousal just so happened to be a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, not that she'd ever tell him that. Not after the way he reacted the first time she brought it up.

"Yeah." He'd plucked the cigarette out of his mouth again and didn't immediately put it back this time around. He just held in between two fingers, staring out (she assumed) at the mountains in the distance.

A wicked grin found its way to her face. "Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?" She asked wryly. He snorted.

"Anybody ever tell you you're a smartass?"

* * *

><p><em>Her head was throbbing. It had been a constant since she woke up and something was telling her it quite possibly had something to do with the bullet that had just been pulled out of her head. She felt weird. Giddy, almost. Her memories were hazy—she could barely remember her name—but she knew enough to know that this wasn't right. But who was she to complain? Even with the radiation, the piles of rubble scattered everywhere, the creepy crawly murder-y things lurking around every corner and the layer of sweat and grime coating her from head to toe, the world had never looked so beautiful. She'd been shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. She was all alone with no money and she couldn't defend herself for shit and didn't know what to do but she was smiling and she felt absolutely exhilarated. She was fucking invincible.<em>

_She left Goodsprings two days ago armed with her varmint rifle and a half-baked notion of revenge on somebody whose name she didn't even know. She was headed north, toward the only thing that wasn't a cactus or a rock that she'd seen for miles; a fucking dinosaur. _

_The town identified itself as Novac and consisted of a handful of run down little houses, a small motel (the Dino Dee-Lite! the little old lady behind the counter had proudly proclaimed) and, of course, the dinosaur. It was a building; part gift shop, part tourist trap, part watch tower, all tacky. The townspeople called it Dinky with an outlandish sense of pride. It was well past nightfall before she arrived but she was too damned keyed up to go to sleep in her room that, quite frankly, she couldn't afford. In all reality she planned to sneak out without paying and hope that the old bag didn't notice until she was a safe distance away. Dinky had been closed for a while by the time she decided to go exploring but she went in anyway, unable to fathom why nobody in this town bother to lock their doors at night. She poked around in the gift shop a bit, perfunctorily pocketed a Dinky souvenir and was about to leave when she spotted the stairs. _

_They creaked loudly with every step and before she knew it she was pulling open the door to Dinky's mouth—and coming face to face with the barrel of a gun. Her hands almost immediately came up, palms facing the gunman; the universal 'don't kill me' gesture. It was the second time that week that she'd found herself at the business end of some nut's gun and yet she couldn't bring herself to be afraid. That strange sense of exhilaration hadn't left her yet and all she could feel was that added kick of adrenaline. _

_Her eyes moved past the gun, trying to catch a glimpse of the person behind it without moving, but all she could make out was a bright red beret. _

_She moved one of her raised hands back and forth by way of a wave and offered a retrospectively pitiful sounding "Hi." It was all she could think of to say. Part of her brain had to stop and wonder if that was how one normally greeted somebody who essentially held your life in their hands. He lowered the gun. Red beret, sunglasses and a face that looked like it would shatter into a million pieces if he ever cracked a smile. _

"_Don't sneak up on me." He said tersely._

_Hot damn. He was pleasant, too. _

* * *

><p><em>She couldn't shoot for shit, her punches were slightly less painful than a pillow fight with an anemic five-year-old girl and she'd probably end up hurting herself more than her opponent if anybody let her get her hands on a melee weapon, but picking locks…that was her specialty. Maybe not the most noble of talents but she'd take her perks where she could get them. She crouched behind the Dino Dee-Lite's front desk armed with a bobby pin and a screwdriver, squinting in the darkness because she was too paranoid to turn on her pip-boy's light. For the past hour she'd played detective for somebody who she had no idea what to call except 'That One Guy'. He said he could trust her because she was out of town, but apparently he didn't trust her enough to at least give her his name. His wife had gone missing. Kidnapped, according to That One Guy. Also dead. The lock to the safe gave a chipper little click and she pulled it open to reveal a handful of caps—which she happily took—along with a piece of paper that she had to hold up to her nose and squint at to read properly. <em>

_It looked like she didn't have to worry about paying for her room, after all._

_A hop, skip and bloody, gruesome gunshot later Norah was making her way back up the creaky stairs. She half expected to open the door and find herself up close and personal with the barrel of That One Guy's gun again. Instead, he was standing with his back to the door, staring down at Jeannie May's body. Just staring. It was a touch unnerving. She was just about to leave his beret by the door and slink away as inconspicuously as possible when he spoke up. _

"_How did you know?" he didn't turn around as he spoke. His eyes seemed to be glued to the pile of Jeannie May tartare._

"_I picked the lock to the safe in the front office. The…bill of sale was inside. Do you want to see—? "_

"_No." he finally turned to face her. "I'd like my beret back, please."_

_She handed it over with a "Sure" and he wasted no time in returning it to its rightful place, and then they just stood there. It was starting to get uncomfortable so naturally, Norah broke the silence. _

"_What are you going to do now?"_

_He turned his head to survey the landscape, unconsciously toying with the trigger of his rifle. The sun was starting to come up. In less than an hour Manny would take his shift, see Jeannie May, alert the townspeople. He'd be gone by then. "Don't know. Maybe I'll drift."_

_She was watching him closely. Studying him, almost. He could practically see the little gears and cogs turning in her head. "We could…drift together."_

_It was the first actual expression she'd seen on his face since she met him; a slight creasing of his forehead, his eyes squinting just a bit behind those sunglasses. In short, he was looking at her like she was out of her gourd. Hell, maybe she was. _

"_You don't want to do that." he said. Really, neither of them did. He'd end up doing something terrible to her, somehow. That's all he ever did anymore, terrible things. _

"_Sure I do. I'm hopeless with a gun. I don't have the combat prowess to smack a bloatfly." she grinned impishly. "A big, strong man following me around might just expand my life span some." the smile faded and suddenly she was as serious as a heart attack. "Besides, I don't like being alone. I don't really have a lot to bring to the table. I can't even cook unless the ability to catch free-flying Sugar Bombs in your mouth constitutes as 'cooking'. I'll help you take out some Legion bastards if you have the patience to help me appropriately kill things, though."_

_And then in the blink of an eye, she was smiling again. She tugged on a lock of white-blonde hair. "I wouldn't be hard to teach. Don't let those dumb blonde jokes fool you."_

_The girl was hopeless. Short and scrawny. Breakable looking. Young. An easy target for any bastard looking to get his rocks off out in the wastes. Her armor was well on its way to being unwearable, her only means of defense was a beat-up varmint rifle that he'd spotted her holding by the _barrel_ at one point and she had just the right combination of overconfidence and naivety to get them both in some serious trouble real fast. She would get him killed one day. Maybe that's why he agreed. _

"_Your name gets mine." she told him as they walked away from Novac. She hadn't shut up for a second since they left Dinky. He was a patient man, but everybody had their limits. He shot a long, withering stare her way in the hopes that she'd get the point. She did. It didn't work out as well as he'd hoped. _

"_Fine." she said, "Guess I'll just have to call you 'soldier'."_

_Carla was smiling up at him under the glow of the New Vegas lights again. _"Hey there, soldier. You look lost." _Jesus _Christ.

"_It's Boone."_

_The smug, triumphant little smile she aimed his way made him put his self control to the test. He felt like strangling her. The urge damn near turned into a physical need when she opened her mouth again._

_"Is that a last name or did your mother really name you Boone?" he didn't answer so she kept talking. "Do I get a first name?"_

"_No."_

"_Can I at least get a first initial?"_

"_No."_

_The sun had almost completely risen by this point. Dinky was well on his way to becoming a dinosaur-shaped speck in the distance and the sun was already beginning to bare down heavily. Norah decided she needed lighter armor. And a more talkative companion. She shot Boone a smile. _

"_Give me a first initial and I'll shut up."_

_The look he gave her was almost cold enough to make the heat bearable. Almost. It was still better than being alone.  
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><p>"Let it be known that I still hate you for last night."<p>

Morning found Cass and Norah bickering over the breakfast that, with the downright miserable cooking skills boasted by everybody else, only Veronica was competent enough to cook.

Cass, who had been thoroughly enjoying rubbing her full night's sleep in Norah's face, didn't look up from her plate as she serenely said, "You deserved it. Now shut up and eat your eggs."

"You are a terrible human being." deadpanned Norah.

Cass's smile was nothing short of evil as she finally looked up, breakfast forgotten. "Now spank me and tell me I've been a _bad_ girl."

"I hate you."

"Do I have to separate you two?" Veronica piped up. She was a few feet away, in the process of making her own plate. Boone had retreated far away, lest the estrogen start to smother him.

When everybody present and accounted for got through the morning without killing each other, they set off for the day towards an as-of-yet undetermined destination. By the time noon rolled around Norah had decided she wanted to head "west-ish". By the time the sun had started to set they had passed the same distinctive looking rock/cactus cluster for the fourth time and Norah was getting closer and closer to becoming the victim of an impromptu execution when suddenly she stopped in her tracks, eyes on her pip-boy. "I know where we are!" she announced chirpily, "Wait here."

And then she was gone, running off to God-knows-where. Boone set off after her with a weary sigh. She wasn't about to run off into the dark all by herself. By the time he caught up with her she was walking out of a tiny shed.

"Hey!" she greeted. She pointed behind her, to the ghoul who'd just followed her out. "You remember Raul, right?"

Vaguely he did, yes. Norah had freed him from Black Mountain after they'd narrowly avoided getting smashed by an army of pissed off super mutants.

"He's coming with us!" she continued. They made their way back to Cass and Veronica, introductions were made and the group continued on with their brand new comrade. Things were going well for a while, and then Norah opened her mouth.

"So after you turned into a ghoul did your extremities just start falling off?"

Raul stopped walking and things got awkward pretty fast.

"What?" he asked.

"Are you anatomically correct?"

There was an audible _smack _heard as Veronica slapped herself on the forehead. Cass stepped in before Raul had time to appropriately rage. "Don't mind her, Raul. She's, uh…" she dropped her voice conspiratorially, "…differently abled."

Raul appraised Norah with milky eyes over Cass's shoulder. "You serious?"

"Oh, yeah. Getting shot in the head like that, it really messed her up." Cass was whispering now, "She has the IQ of a mole rat."

He sent a final chilly look Norah's way, but seemed to be appeased nonetheless. He kept on walking. Silence reigned heavily once more and Norah waited a moment before slowing down to walk next to Cass.

"Did you just tell Raul that I'm—"

"_Yes_, now shut your mouth and act excited when I offer you a snack cake from now on."


	7. Chapter 7

_Oh God, I'm sorry. x.x There were holidays, then a purchase and subsequent move-in of my first house (!), and then I battled with an obnoxious bout of writer's block. This chapter was completely scrapped and rewritten around eight times. My writing process needs some tweaking, it appears. _

_At any rate, look! A chapter! The ending is, again, totally rushed and I'm not too sure about it as a whole but it's 5am and it's time to upload this bitch already.  
><em>

…_also, happy belated Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa/New Year's/hippie solstice. _

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><p>"Mother<em>fucker<em>!"

Norah's shot went low and to the left, missing the gecko completely but effectively massacring the equally dangerous tumbleweed rolling parallel to the creature. The butt of her shotgun recoiled hard against her shoulder and sent her to the ground. A shot rang out directly to her right and the gecko crumpled mid-stride, a bullet hole now located right between its big, empty eyes. She felt like it was mocking her. Her eyes shifted from the gecko to the shredded bits of tumbleweed scattered on the ground.

"I suck." she said, petulantly.

"It's alright, Boss. You still have your looks." Raul held out a hand, which she took, and helped her up. Once he had her vertical he continued on his merry way, adding over his shoulder, "For now."

Norah gaped after him, mouth hanging open attractively as Cass sidled up next to her. "I have never, in my entire life, met a man who could be classified as 'catty'." she said in disbelief.

"I'm not going to say you don't deserve it."

"That's exactly what you're _supposed_ to say! Whatever happened to the 'supportive female friend' archetype?"

"I think you prefer to surround yourself with people who are willing to let you know when you're being a spectacular dipshit."

It was true; she knew it was true. That didn't necessarily mean she was willing to admit it. She heaved a sigh and made to keep walking. Raul was getting a hell of a head start. Waiting for everybody else was apparently not a priority when nobody knew where they were going. Veronica was now busy crouching over the dead gecko, trying to quickly salvage what meat she could for dinner. She took her role as 'designated chef/face-puncher-offer' very seriously. Boone had been keeping his distance ever since what Cass had lovingly dubbed 'The Incident', realizing that there would be an onslaught of weird coming from all directions until the situation was resolved. He trailed behind at a safe distance.

They'd been on the move for the better part of the day with no particular destination in mind and were getting dangerously close to Fiend territory, just barely skirting the border between crazed chem addicts and a few miles of nothing but abandoned, ramshackle buildings and several varieties of Wildlife Surprise lurking around every corner, door and rock, waiting to pounce.

Her eyes strayed to the general direction of New Vegas. Did she want to endure the inevitable bodily harm that came with going through Fiend territory in order to go home or did she want to continue through desert limbo until she stumbled upon some hard-up schmuck who needed her to do some leg work for them? It was a tough call but her decision came fast.

"Alright," she said, loudly enough for everybody to hear her. "We're throwing in the towel. Time to go home and drink until Fisto looks pretty."

Just like that, Cass, who'd begun lagging behind, had energy again. She jogged forward and grabbed Norah's arm, trying to drag her along faster. "That's what I love about you, Doll. Your extraordinary decision making skills."

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><p><em>Her decision to leave wasn't something that was long in the making. She hadn't been carefully plotting for months, pouring over maps of Nevada in search of a place to go, buffing up on her edible plant knowledge and deciding how, exactly she was going to make a living out there. She never even took a minute to pack her things. <em>

_There was nobody around the vault door for the first time in her memory. That was enough to give her pause. She knew how to open the door. She was twenty-two years old with nothing to look forward to except for _Purified WaterDay_ in the cafeteria. She felt like the place was sucking the life out of her. Her father was dead and as far as she was concerned everybody else in the vault could fuck right off. Realizing all those things was really all it took. Without so much as a brief consideration for the future, she glanced over her shoulder and hurried over to the control panel. _

_The doors opened slowly, the shrieking of the metal making her cringe. She unconsciously stepped back from the first rays of light starting to peek through the opening. And then, the doors were open. She was getting a glimpse of what was known only as 'the outside' in the vault. She shielded her eyes and hurried out without looking back. _

* * *

><p>Her head was starting to hurt. Clearly, another shot was in order. She knocked on the bar and watched as a new shot glass was filled by a disinclined looking James. She could tell that he was on the verge of refusing service, if the way his eyes kept going from her glass, to the rapidly growing pile of identical glasses—which she'd taken to stacking neatly into a pyramid off to the side—to her face was anything to go by.<p>

"Flying solo tonight?" he asked, unsmiling. Norah snorted, eyes immediately fixing on a spot in the corner of The Wrangler, where Cass and Raul occupied a table, talking chummily.

"She's straying on me, the tramp." she muttered, no real edge to her words. The contents of her shot glass disappeared and she made a face as the vodka burned its way down her esophagus. She knocked on the bar again. James frowned.

"Where's that other buddy of yours? The unpleasant one." he asked, not moving to give her that refill.

"Fucked if I know. Probably asleep by now." she tapped on the bar again, more insistently. "And he's not unpleasant." she added a moment later as an afterthought.

"I'm not serving you anymore. Get alcohol poisoning somewhere else, sweetheart."

"Jesus Christ, James. I'm fine." She stood up to demonstrate. Bad idea. She plopped back down onto her barstool bonelessly as all the worst parts of alcohol consumption hit her at once. "Fuck." She rested her head on the bar, on top of folded arms. "Maybe I'm not okay."

"Never question a bartender's intuition."

"I think I'm going to throw up."

"Not in my bar, you're not. Go throw up outside like the other drunks."

Norah didn't lift her head to look at him. "Fuck you, James." she said lackadaisically, voice muffled.

"Charming. Out."

With a final glare, which even she knew was pretty laughable on a scale of 'shameful' to 'intimidating', she forced herself up and out of The Wrangler. After she found a nice, secluded spot for a little projectile vomiting, she launched a search for someplace to lie down, settling on a bench that was miraculously both intact and lacking in urine stains. The latter was especially hard to find in these parts.

"_That's what I love about you, Doll. Your extraordinary decision making skills."_

Cass's words danced around in her head, over and over, _judging_ her to the point that she wanted to march right back to The Wrangler and smack her out of principle. She would have done it, too, if her body felt like agreeing with her. Instead she laid an arm over her eyes with a frustrated huff. The world went black not long after.

"Maud, I think she's dead."

The words cut through the thick haze, bringing her back to consciousness. She was suddenly aware of the hard _something _repeatedly jabbing her in the side.

"She's not dead," another voice—Maud?—countered, "she just needs a little persuading." This was punctuated by another, harder, jab. She opened her eyes. The displeased frown on her face melted away in the blink of an eye as she took in her assailants. Three old women stood over her, dressed in identical pink dresses that would send Veronica into convulsions. They were _adorable._ With some significant protesting from her head, she sat up.

"Your caps." the poker—Maud—said. She held a rolling pin in one hand and was smacking it into the palm of her other hand rhythmically. "Hand them over."

Norah's eyes followed the rolling pin's motions before focusing in on Maud, taking in her wrinkled features, her graying hair, painstakingly assembled into bun, her clean, wrinkle-free dress, before she broke into a wide grin that made her head feel like it was about to explode. "Holy shit. You're a gang. That's the cutest thing I've ever seen."

Her lip curled up into a sneer. The rolling pin was suddenly still. "I'm not going to ask you again."

"Look, you guys are precious but I'm not going to give you my caps. I had to do some pretty stupid shit to get them in the first place." She stood up, head still swimming, and stretched. Her spine cracked into place. She made to leave, deciding that it was high time she went home.

"Ruth, Ida!"

The other two were suddenly in front of her, each brandishing a rolling pin of their very own. Norah was suddenly painfully aware that she'd left her weapons at the Lucky 38, even her pistol. This was possibly the most ridiculous standoff she'd ever been in. She turned back to Maud.

"_Rolling pins_? " she asked, incredulously, "Rolling pins. That's your primary weapon. _Rolling pins _are what you use to try and intimidate people into giving you their caps. Maud, you poor, misguided bitch."

The entire left side of her face suddenly felt like somebody had just taken a swing at her with a baseball bat. What felt like a trickle of blood was running down her chin and her jaw felt loose. Lacking a weapon and feeling like she was staring down the barrel of the most embarrassing beat down in New Vegas history, she did the logical thing. She ran like hell, Maud, Ruth and Ida at her heels.

For three geriatrics in heels, they sure were quick on their feet.

It wasn't until morning that a disgruntled Norah finally arrived at Presidential Suite, sporting a slight limp from a sprained ankle, a bloody lip and nose and what appeared to be a nasty contusion on her left temple. She could smell breakfast cooking, but it only served to remind her that on top of everything else, she'd had way too much to drink. Veronica's head popped out of the kitchen just as she was making a beeline to her bedroom. She wanted to sulk and pass out, in that order.

"What _happened_ to you?" she asked, looking appropriately baffled.

"I don't want to talk about it." Norah bit back moodily. Her bedroom door promptly slammed shut behind her.


	8. Chapter 8

_Sorry, you guys. I suck and so does writer's block. In an effort to make up for the half year wait (SORRY. ;-;) here's the longest chapter I've written yet!_

_Thank you guys so much for all the amazing reviews. I got so many last chapter and I was so ridiculously happy about it (Mother of God, I'm dull. ;-;). Thank you for making writing so much fun. :3 _

_Also, I'd like to give a very public thank you to xXthecatalystXx for being such a big help to me with this chapter which, honestly, I had a hell of a time writing. _

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><p>Consciousness barreled into Norah with all the subtlety of a chainsaw to the face. Pleasant, dreamless sleep all but disintegrated under the full force of the massive hangover she'd subjected herself to. For what felt like the thousandth time, she vowed to never drink again and for what felt like the thousandth time, she knew deep down that she was full of shit and that she'd be out making bad decisions again by the end of the week.<p>

None of that mattered right now, though. Right now the entire left side of her face felt like it'd been bitch-slapped by a deathclaw—or a fucking fossil with a rolling pin—her legs ached from running from one end of New Vegas to the other, her body felt like one gigantic bruise and her mouth was feeling extremely dry. Alcohol was the last thing on her mind. She blindly stretched her arm out toward the bottle of water she vaguely remembered setting on her bedside table at some point in time, thirst clashing with a complete and utter unwillingness to open her eyes.

Her table felt weird today.

Wait. No. Not her table. Something _on _her table. That made sense. Tables weren't warm and they sure as hell didn't feel like skin. She furrowed her brow. What did she put on her table that was warm and felt like skin?

Her mind eventually took pity and pieced it together for her. _An arm, you stupid twit. It's an arm._

Her stomach dropped. She _knew_ that arm.

_Fuck_.

And so it was with great reluctance that Norah finally cracked an eye open, simultaneously confirming her fears and fucking _somehow _making her head hurt even more. She was now hurting in parts of her skull that she didn't even know existed. Her aching stomach twisted into nervous knots as she took in Boone, who looked slightly more displeased than usual today. He'd pulled a chair up next to her bed and looked like he'd been sitting there a while, sans-sunglasses—he wouldn't be able to see out of them with how dim her bedroom was, the only light coming from the small, weak desk lamp sitting on her desk across the room—left arm cocked at the elbow and resting on her nightstand—right next to her fucking water. She took a moment to glare at the bottle like it'd done something wrong before slowly, almost involuntarily, shifting her eyes back over to the stock-still statue of a man less than two feet away from her.

He studied her face, his ever-present frown as prominent as ever. Not for the first time, she felt like if she ever saw a real, genuine, honest-to-God smile on his face, her internal organs would cease to function from the sheer shock of it all. Two bullets to the face? No problem. Boone showing some form of a positive emotion? Nope. Her poor brain wouldn't be able to handle the shock. The universe would implode.

After a long, tense moment, she forced a smile. "Good morning." She was aiming for chirpy but the greeting came out sounding gravelly and maybe just a little bit pitiful. Smiling hurt, so she stopped. Her throat felt like sandpaper. She wanted to make another grab for her water but she stopped herself, almost afraid to move with Boone looking her like that. He remained stubbornly quiet. She couldn't tell for sure with how dark it was, but she could have sworn that his frown deepened a bit more. Silence reigned. Somewhere in the suite, a clock was ticking. She couldn't hear anybody moving around. They were completely alone. For a brief, fleeting moment she felt uneasy, but she forced the feeling away. There was nobody in the world she trusted more than Boone.

He moved. The arm that had been resting on the table came up, towards his face. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a weary sigh before finally—_finally—_opening his mouth.

"_What_ did you do?"

She sat up, ignoring the way her body screamed at her as she did so. Her eyes moved of their own accord to look down at herself, and even with the limited lighting, she could tell she looked like a mess. Her arms and what she could see of her legs were covered with an impressive array of scratches, cuts and bruises. There was a bite mark on her upper right bicep too perfectly straight to be caused by anything _but_ dentures. Her knee had a nasty looking scrape on it that she didn't remember getting. It wasn't very long but it looked deep and caked with dirt and other assorted horrors. Maybe she'd have Julie look at it for her. Lifting a hand to her aching jaw, she winced as her fingertips grazed across a layer of crusty, dried blood. She was afraid to look at a mirror.

"Would you believe that a deathclaw materialized in the middle of Freeside and I had to fight it off with my bare hands?" she tried. Feeling emboldened, she made a hasty grab for her water because _damn it,_ this was _her _room in _her _snazzy presidential suite and she was thirsty and was not going to be kept from sweet, sweet hydration by sour facial expressions. No sir.

She took a tentative glance his way as her fingers closed around the bottle. His expression—passive, with a steady undercurrent of what she perceived to be irritation—told her that, no, he would not believe it. It was worth a shot, anyway. She had a whole cache of backup excuses she could have tried; "I was at The Wrangler—drinking _water_—when all of a sudden Fisto developed a taste for human blood!", and so on, and so forth, but she had no doubt that he wouldn't buy any of them. Their only purpose would be buying her some time and she risked finding out exactly how long of a fuse Boone had. Defeated, she sighed as she struggled with the lid. "I got mugged."

_Victory. _Off came the lid. The feeling of cold, refreshing watery goodness on her parched throat was almost orgasmic; almost enough to make her forget about everything that had happened in the past twelve hours or so.

Almost.

"Who did it?" Boone was talking again. He'd spoken seven whole words in under five minutes, and she was sure that he was well on his way towards a new record.

"Pardon?"

"Who _mugged_ you?"

_Ten. _She was keeping count involuntarily by now.

Norah pursed her lips. "I have no idea." He already thought she was inept. There was no way in hell she was going to add fuel to _that_ fire. She wasn't even sure why the 'who' mattered, anyway. There were hundreds of faceless thugs in Freeside. As far as he was concerned, she had no way of knowing. He wasn't going to just guess that a rogue group of antique grade-A cunts in matching pre-war finery had bludgeoned her nearly to death with rolling pins. Not unless she told him.

Her thirst was more or less quenched but she kept the bottle tightly clasped in between both hands. It gave her something to look at besides _him_, who looked like he was trying to stare a more elaborate answer out of her. He didn't believe her, and for a second she was afraid he'd press her. He didn't say another word about it, though. Boone did a lot of things, but he did not nag.

"Where was your gun?"

"Here, in my room." She had an entire arsenal under her bed.

Boone leaned forward, forearms coming up to rest on his thighs. He was now close enough for her to see him with one hundred percent clarity. His mouth was set in a thin line, jaw clenched, shoulders tense.

"I told you; never go out without a gun." He said it slowly, like he was trying to explain a simple concept to an invalid. A small voice in the back of her head told her that that's exactly what he was doing. She gripped the bottle a little bit tighter.

"Even if I _did_ have a gun, what good do you think it would do? I'm a horrible shot. Letting me walk around with a gun in a highly populated area with lots of buildings and shit to get in the way is irresponsible." It was a weak protest, but some distant, stubborn part of her wasn't willing to admit that she'd made a big, stupid mistake in failing to bring some form of protection with her. Maybe she should invest in a guard dog.

Boone didn't say anything for a while. The clock that was ticking God-knows-where seemed to get louder and louder as time progressed. She wondered where everybody else was. The air felt thicker and the longer they sat there, the more uncomfortable she got. She took a breath, ready to clear her throat, or talk, or do something—_anything, _when the legs of Boone's chair suddenly scraped against the floor. He was moving away from her, pushing the chair back in order to stand up. He looked huge standing over the bed like that, the general lack of light fucking with her perception the way it was.

"Get up." He held a hand out to her.

"That's not funny."

"It wasn't supposed to be."

Norah frowned, set her water back on her table and crossed her arms over her chest. "_No_." she pronounced, knowing she looked like a five-year-old gearing up for a temper tantrum and not giving a damn. "I'll die."

"You've been asking me to teach you to shoot since we met. Here's your chance. Get up."

_That_ got her attention. It wasn't that he'd been procrastinating all these months when it came to teaching her to defend herself, they just never got a break, in between the Legion raids and the deathclaws and the mutants and the feral ghouls and the goddamned everything else that had been trying their damndest to kill them almost every day, on top of what seemed like hundreds of errands she'd agreed to run from one end of the Mojave to the other. In time, they'd just gotten used to Boone doing all the killing and defending while Norah made a valiant effort to contribute, occasionally getting the odd lucky shot in. She sat up a little straighter, ignoring the way her entire body screamed at her for it.

"You're going to teach me to shoot?"

"Not if you don't get up."

She didn't need further coaxing. She grabbed his proffered hand and hoisted herself up, swaying a little on her feet at first and feeling, for one horrifying moment, that she was about to throw up all over Boone. It passed though, and off they went, Norah snatching her water back up on her way out.

Meanwhile, Boone was putting all of his willpower towards not saying or doing something to her that he might regret later. She was a mess of scrapes, cuts and bruises from head to toe and she was acting like nothing was wrong. More importantly, she was acting like she'd _done_ nothing wrong, running off on her own, without a weapon, at night, in _Freeside_. She was lucky she'd just gotten mugged and she didn't seem to understand that. He led her far away from The Strip, into a lifeless bit of land just east of Fiend Territory. The only thing that broke up the flat, sandy monotony of the place was the odd cactus or tumbleweed and the high, steep cliffs hovering way off in the distance. A soldier ant's carcass was crumpled in the sand a ways off. The quiet was unnerving to someone who had been in the heart of New Vegas not even an hour ago, but Norah paid it no mind. She was practically bouncing up and down where she stood, all previous ailments long forgotten.

"So, where do we start?" An ear-to-ear grin was splitting her face in two. She'd been looking forward to this for a long, long time. Boone handed her a gun, and her face fell. She'd been expecting a shotgun. Maybe even a rifle. Something with some force behind it. A weapon with balls, so to speak. Norah had come all the way out here to do some damage, and here she was, holding a 9mm. She looked at Boone like he'd sprouted an extra head.

"This is adorable but I thought I was learning to defend myself, not tickle my enemies into submission."

He took his sunglasses off. "Pistols are light," he explained, hiding his frustration well, save for the glare he was giving her. "It's easier for beginners to aim with them."

"My aim is fine. Give me a shotgun."

"I've seen you shoot with a shotgun. The recoil knocks you on your ass. You'll get a bigger gun when you're used to the pistol."

Norah grimaced down at the puny gun, distaste radiating off of her in waves. Then, reluctantly, and with a scowl at Boone, she pointed the damned thing. He moved to stand next to her, on her left hand side, taking a moment to critique her stance. "Legs apart," he instructed. Norah snorted, but complied.

"And here I thought you hated talking dirty."

He didn't take the bait. "Straighten your right arm."

"Why don't you come stand behind me and do it for me?"

His mouth tightened into a thin line, and Norah could tell that he was neither amused nor seduced. "Killjoy," she grumbled, straightening her arm like she was told.

"Aim for the ant." He inclined his head towards the dead insect and she obeyed, without comment this time. Small blessings. "Relax your grip," she did, "and squeeze the trigger."

The shot went high and several yards to the right of her target. Unfazed, she finally turned her head to look at Boone straight-on. Her lips curled into a wry, infuriating little grin.

"So how long before I can graduate to a BB gun?"

The pistol was gone from her loose grip and before she could even process what was happening, cold, sickeningly familiar metal was being pushed against her temple—hard.

Her stomach dropped, clenching painfully all the way down, and her breath caught in her throat. "What are you…" She couldn't finish the sentence. Her voice came out sounding small and shaky. She couldn't move, couldn't blink. She looked straight ahead through eyes the size of dinner plates, trying to see Boone through her peripherals but unwilling to actually turn her head towards him. Her lungs wanted her to hyperventilate but she was afraid moving too much would, for whatever reason, make him pull the trigger.

"You're dead." Her breath caught in her throat. His voice was low and controlled, but she was sure he'd finally snapped. There was something about the way he spoke—some menacing air to his tone that made her almost as uneasy as the gun currently poised to blow her brains out. This was it. After years of pain and stress, Craig Boone's seemingly everlasting patience had reached a brutal end. For some reason it didn't surprise her that _she_ of all people had driven him over the edge. After all, she had a knack for it. He leaned in close to her, speaking directly into her left ear. "Just like that, you're dead. You got lucky once. You really think you can take another bullet to the brain?" He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into her skin, as if to punctuate his words. She wondered what the bruise would look like—or if she'd ever get the chance to find out. "Is this still some big joke to you?"

"No." she croaked. She was quaking in her boots now, wanting desperately to stay perfectly still but unable to stop, no matter how hard she tried and some part of her just _knew_ that she was going to start crying in a minute, if she wasn't dead first.

And just like that, it was over.

Boone lowered the gun, took a step back and just _stood _there like nothing happened. She turned to gape at him stupidly, mouth opening and closing, trying to formulate something that might sound remotely like the English language. That was _it_? She wasn't dead? Her stomach began the slow process of unknotting itself and holy _shit_, did the air taste sweet right about now. The dull ache in her temple might as well have been a kiss. She tentatively put a hand up to it as the metaphorical gears and cogs in her head whirred and buzzed themselves into oblivion.

"What the fuck was _that_?" her mouth moved of its own accord and she almost cringed, distantly wondering about the health benefits that came with snapping at the man who'd just held a gun to her head. Regardless, she glared at him, a slow rage beginning to burn through the relief, replacing it little by little. She took an unsteady step backwards, away from him, and then another, trying to put some space between them in case he tried to pull that shit again. "Jesus Christ, Boone," the anger and confusion turned her into a sputtering mess, even as she tried to—what? She didn't even know. Get an answer? Swear at him some more? Call him some names in a poor effort to make him feel bad? In any case, her mouth kept moving, voice getting louder and higher by the second. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Boone met her gaze, clearly not giving a flying fuck about _how_ many daggers she was glaring at him. He looked just as unsympathetic as ever, and her mind conjured up pictures of a no-nonsense father figure type—pictures she would rather not associate with somebody whose pants she regularly got into. She pushed the pipe-smoking, unattractive pre-war sweater-wearing , stern but loving life advice-giving imagery away with immediate and extreme prejudice and by the time she'd effectively cleared her mind, he'd started talking.

"It's not hard to die out here."

"You've established that, you prick."

"That was the point."

The explanation did nothing to diffuse her temper. "You decided to demonstrate by pulling a _gun_ on me? One bump, one nudge, one accidental _twitch _and you would have killed me!" she was outright yelling now, betrayal and hurt starting to seep in along with the anger and confusion. She closed the gap she'd originally made between them in two quick steps, fear and all previous notions of self preservation long forgotten, and punched him in the arm hard, not hurting him in the slightest but probably bruising her own knuckles. That set her off even more, and her irritation with getting even more banged up than she already was got added to the mix. She stopped yelling, lowered her voice to a tone that she hoped would have more of an impact. "Are you fucking crazy or do you just hate me so much that you'd just risk my life to prove a fucking point?"

He held the gun up without another word, and she couldn't stop herself from flinching. He kept it flat in his palm, though, so one side of the gun was facing up, and moved it close enough for her to see. Despite herself, she leaned in to take a look, and when she saw what he meant for her to see, she didn't know if she wanted to laugh, punch him again or hug him.

The safety. The son of a bitch had the safety on the entire time.

All malicious feelings left her, and she suddenly felt drained. And extraordinarily stupid. She glanced up at him, shoulders slumping.

"You're an asshole." She said, half heartedly. He stayed infuriatingly quiet and her anger welled up again for one last hurrah. She punched him again in the same spot, hoping it'd be enough to cause him at least a little bit of discomfort this time around.

She snatched the pistol from him. "Keep my right arm straight, right?"

* * *

><p><em>So, to top off the AN fest that is chapter 8, is there anybody out there who'd be interested in beta-ing for me? I think I'm pretty good at the whole spelling and grammar deal (not to say there isn't always room for improvement) but I'd love a soundboard of sorts so I can show you what I have so far in whatever chapter I happen to be working on, beg for ideas, get some constructive criticism. I think it would do me a world of good to have somebody riding my ass to get these chapters out faster. I know there's a beta forum for this very purpose, but I'd really rather have somebody who's actually interested in the story helping me out. Let me know if you'd be interested. I'd be eternally grateful~_


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